Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #09
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So we are looking at the 4th hadith
of the 40 hadith collection of Imam Nawawi.
So if you wanna pull it up on
a phone,
laptop, whatever you might have,
this is narrated by the companion, Abdullah ibn
Masood
Radialahu
An,
who we talked about last week
a bit.
And the hadith quite often is focused on
concepts of embryology and fate.
And so just while we're pulling it up,
to recap, we started talking about it last
week, and we got into a discussion on
who Abdullah bin Masood is,
companion of the prophet of God,
He was one of the first people to
convert to Islam in the Meccan society.
He came from a low
social class.
He was black.
He
was amongst those who are deeply persecuted
in the early period of the Meccan society.
He was the first person to publicly recite
Quran in Mecca, and he had volunteered to
do it in front of the Kaaba.
He recited Surat Al Rahman,
and they just started beating him while he
was reciting.
And people asked him why would you do
this, and he said I would do it
again if I needed to.
Physically, he had a very kinda small physical
stature.
He was skinny. He was small.
There
were people who would treat him poorly for
all of these reasons. Right? If you come
on Wednesday to the Sierra class that we
do, and we talked about Meccan society,
kinda how it's formulated,
challenges in a very stratified society
around race, class, gender,
where lineage is very important,
where
you
have no sense of accountability because the theology
has no afterlife to it. So you just
do whatever you want to if this is
all that you got going on is in
this world.
And Abdul ibn Mas'ud, he's,
like, in the midst of all of this.
Right?
We talked about also
why it's important for us to recognize that
the prophet, peace be upon him, had senior
companions who were black.
And quite often, we don't get taught this
when we're learning the stories of the companions.
Or even in relation to this hadith
that's talking about
phases of embryology, it's talking about other
divine decree.
You know, how does
Abdul ibn Masood
being
a
young man
who converts to Islam early on,
faces this persecution,
has parents who are stricken by poverty,
He
himself is
black,
comes from low income background,
and he's
telling people this hadith
that all of us are created from a
similar beginning.
And all of these things are decreed by
God.
Right? And what does this mean when we're
feeding into it now? Recognition also
of the person who's narrating
the hadith and the words of the prophet
of God and how it turns things upside
down in a lot of different ways. Abdul
Masud is no joke as a person. Right?
He goes to Kufa.
He is heavily influential
of the development of the Hanafi school of
thought. It's a major legal school,
within the 4 legal schools of Sunni Islam.
The prophet alaihi salam describes him as somebody
that you should learn Quran from,
you know, and he's a young black man
who doesn't have a lot of money.
And it's not taught to us always these
things, then we can't, like, understand
necessarily also certain things that are important
in terms
of where and how Islam teaches us to
have reverence
and deference to people of all backgrounds.
Because, you know, my family is from the
Indian subcontinent.
There's a good chance if you are from
Pakistan,
in this room
or like from that part of the world
that you practice Hanafi fiqh, right?
They're not teaching people that one of the
influencers of Hanafi fic in the Indian subcontinent.
They're not teaching us that
it was heavily influenced by a young black
man
in Pakistan,
like, you know, I can say it's because
I'm Pakistani, right? But like, they live in
this world where it's all about kinda skin
whitening cream,
the realities of being colonized,
where you seek validation
from whiteness and supremacist
systems.
There's
these kind of consequences,
you know. It permeates other cultures as well,
but can you imagine how it would be
different
if in religious gatherings,
people were teaching,
like, these facets of religion also
that are there. They're not made up, you
know. Abu al ibn Musud, his students
described him,
as being somebody who wears hair and braids.
Do you know what I mean? Right? When
you try to
conceptualize
a companion of the prophet of God in
your head, whatever you would think somebody who's
living in Mecca
or Medina looks like, does your mind conceptualize
a black man with braids in his hair,
you know?
And he's one of the 4 people that
the prophet said to learn Quran from.
Someone lost their phone.
Is anybody
losing their phone?
Zoya is calling you right now. Does this
look familiar?
Anybody? Yeah.
Why is it there? Why is it there?
It's found out there. It's found outside. Okay.
Is it yours? Up here. Yeah.
Sorry. I didn't pick up when she called.
No. That's correct.
Oh, great.
Sorry about that. I'm glad we found it
under the roof.
So we wanna think about this
because,
Abdulayman, he doesn't also narrate thousands of hadith.
He narrates,
like, about 809100
hadith. You know, Quran is something he's more
associated with.
And it's not that, like,
the companions narrated every single thing that they
heard from the like, each companion doesn't say,
here's every single thing that I heard from
the prophet of God. Do you know? So
why are they continuing to pass on the
things that they're passing on? It's not selective
in those ways, but in being able to
understand,
like, as we read through the text of
this, what are we extrapolating from it? Okay.
So just so we get into it,
I don't know what's wrong with me. I
think I'm getting sick. So just so you
know, if things come out and they don't
sound like they make sense, just tell me.
Because my head's getting a little stuffy right
now. I think I just need to get
some some, like, vitamin c. I was eating
a lot of gross foods the last few
days,
and that's probably what it is. My body
is reminding me I'm not 5 years old
anymore.
So can somebody read the hadith,
in English or in Arabic? It's the 4th
hadith, Imam Nawi's hadith
in that collection.
Does anyone have it?
Hadith number 4. Right? These are by the
final actions? Yep.
On the authority of Allah in the Masjid,
may Allah be pleased with
him, who said the messenger of Allah, peace
be upon him,
and he is the truthful
and the believed
narrated to us.
Rarely the creation of each one of you
is brought together in his mother's womb
for 40 days in the form of a
drop,
then he becomes a clot of blood for
a light period,
then a morsel
of flesh
for like, period.
And then there is sent to him the
angel
who blows the breath of life
into him
and who is commended
and who is commended
with 4 matters
to write down his trustence,
his lifespan,
his actions,
and whether he will be happy or unhappy,
whether or not he will enter paradise.
By Allah, other than whom there is no
deity,
rarely one of you performs
the actions of the people of paradise
until
there is but an arm's length
between him and it.
And that which has been written overtakes him
and he
and so he acts
with actions of the people
of the hellfire,
and thus enters it. And rarely one of
you performs
the actions of the people of hellfire
until there is but an arm's length
between him and it,
and that which
has been written overtakes him.
And so he acts with the actions
of the people of paradise,
and thus, he enters
it. Bukhari Muslim.
Great.
Yeah. Does anybody wanna read the Arabic?
Yeah. Go ahead.
So just a couple of things, and as
we go through this over the course of
however many Mondays we stay with this text,
like, you wanna try to memorize parts of
the hadith.
The prophet, alaihi, alaihi, sallam, is an amazing
communicator.
You know, his words are described as being
in nature
that they're not excessive or superfluous,
but each word
is something that has deep impact, concise statements.
But also in many of these hadith,
what we're learning is actually like the exact
words that the prophet said. There's to this
as well and just engaging the hadith, reading
from the hadith.
Some of the etiquettes of it similar to,
you know, how we're taught chronologically
to not be raising our voices in the
presence of the prophet of God. Right? That
we want to be in a place as
hadith are narrated and read. We're just giving
our attentiveness to them. You know, the way
that you would kinda conceptualize or envision
that the messenger is actually standing in front
of you saying these things. What kind of
deference would you be engaged in or kinda
and you're listening to this. Right? So it's
not just hearing,
but actual active listening in that capacity.
So today, we wanna kinda think about this
hadith,
pass the part
where,
Abdul ibn Mas'ud, he describes the prophet as
being Sadiq and Masduk.
Right? The trustworthy one and the one who
is trusted.
So he spoke truth and people believed
him, you know, and these are not, like,
small things.
Right? We talked about this a lot in
terms of character last week and even in
reference to the world that surround us. Like,
literally, all day, we're bombarded by lies
constantly. Like, everybody's lying. You know? It's like
the point. We're like, I don't even know
who to believe anymore and how much that
creates chaos inside that you walk into a
space and
it can be physical or virtual, and it's
I don't know if these people who
I don't know if these people who,
you know, are my friends, quote unquote, are
my followers
for these things
that I, like, can trust them in what
I'm about to say. What if I say
this and somebody does this? What if I
say that? You can imagine
that people just found
a sense of rest
in the presence of the messenger of God,
alaihis salam.
Right? That they knew he was attentive,
he was listening,
but he wasn't just someone who spoke truth
with his words.
His actions, his demeanor
were reflective of what it was that he
was espousing.
Do you know?
You know, the Quran asked, why do you
say that which you don't do? There's no
application
of this. Right? And if you came on
Wednesday
to the Sierra class, we're talking about the
prophet as a business person,
and,
oh, thanks, man. Why is everybody being so
nice? Do I look miserable right now? Is
that is that what it is? Yeah.
Is that closer?
You you're in a place where, you know,
we talked about last week in our class,
which isn't happening this Wednesday, by the way.
The building's gonna be closed. They changed the
days that the building is open on Friday
after we met last Wednesday.
So
this is the they're locking the building on
Wednesday. Everybody's getting the day off at the
university.
But we talked about him being a business
person and shifting into an entrepreneurial pursuit,
and, you know, there's nothing without meaning in
Allah's plan. So why is the prophet being
sent to Sham to do these trade routes
and all of these other things? And people
gave a lot of different answers that were
all amazing. But we said too,
when he became the prophet at 40 years
of age, he lived for 40 years, and
he didn't, like, just live in his house
in Mecca, but he went to the Banusad.
He went to Medina. He went to Sham.
He went to all these people. He had
business transactions with individuals.
It wasn't that he was an unknown person,
he's the grandson of Abdul Motalib,
Like people know him and his lineage
and nobody
from his
adversaries
to even just like acquaintances
could come and say, this man ever did
anything dishonest.
They couldn't say, in any of these interactions,
you shouldn't believe he's a prophet
because he did this one thing this one
time.
His honesty just permeated
his
character, his decisions,
his interactions.
It's crazy.
Like, how
remarkable
this is
and how it is manifest in one person
just especially if you deal with people. Right?
I sit with people all the time who
tell me stuff about their life. You know?
And
there's a lot of, like, terrible human beings
in the world. Right? May Allah protect us
from them and protect us from ever becoming
them. Do you know? And you gotta be
wary of these things because the minute you
start to tell yourself
that I'm not capable of doing something, that's
where Shaitan's got you. You know? The prophet
was
a Sadiq.
He was the trustworthy one.
Masduk,
he was they believed him, like people trusted
him. You know? May Allah make us like
this. So this is what Abdul ibn Masood
is
before he gets into the text of it.
We talked about it briefly last week. If
you missed it, you can find it on
the podcast. So we wanna get into the
actual,
now kinda text of the Hadith, the mutton
of the Hadith, where the onset
is talking about things that are relevant to
these characteristics of truthfulness and trustworthiness
because
this initial part of the hadith is a
firmic, Quranic revelation
that also speaks about embryology
at a time where people don't have any
insight on how embryology functions.
So the
idea is that
it's just true because God and his messenger
said it's true.
We're gonna talk about that in a little
bit, but I want us to talk first
about other elements of things that go on.
And what's happening here beyond the science of
it is giving us an understanding
of how every single person that comes into
existence
enters into
a worldly sphere of life.
Do you know?
In order for us to understand this, we
gotta understand what's happening prior to, as well
as what's coming thereafter.
So
what is happening at a 120
days in this hadith?
The soul is being breathed into the fetus.
Where is this soul before this?
Where is it?
With a love. But where? Like, where is
this soul?
Yeah.
Like, in this
the the soul word. Like Yeah. Right? The
abode of the,
like all the souls, the individual
that you have, it didn't come into existence
at the moment it's introduced into the fetus.
Right? It existed prior to,
and this is just this introduction into the
world.
So every soul exists
prior
to entrance into this world. This is what
our
theology teaches us
that we are created beings.
And so first phase of existence,
if we had a whiteboard here, I would
write on it, but I'm not getting up
because I'm tired.
So think about my table
as, like, the lifespan
of your soul. You know? It's great that
we have this date and these cups of
stuff now because I could use them.
So say up until this mic
is
the existence
of
your soul
prior to entering the womb. The abode of
the.
This is where your soul is prior to.
Every soul is there. Right?
Is a chronic verse.
All of the progeny of Adam is gathered
together.
Am I not your lord? Allah asks everyone.
The verse says,
that, yes, we bear witness to this. This
is the covenant.
Now
you have interactions with people. This is why,
like, we're taught, for example, if you just
vibe really well with somebody in this world,
there's a good chance your souls were close
to each other when you're here in the
abode of the Adwa. Do you know what
I mean?
If you also do not get along so
well do you guys get along really well?
You just gave each other a pow? Yeah.
Amazing. Great.
So if you don't like like, someone's just
annoying to you, which is a thing. You
don't have to like everyone to respect them.
Means all of the children of Adam are
dignified.
I can respect you and still find you
to be irritating.
Right? I don't find any of you irritating.
You're all great.
You don't have to like me to respect
me,
but
by virtue of what we're talking about right
now,
if you don't really get along with somebody
you've never met, and you're like, I don't
they're annoying to me. I don't really like
them so much. The same way, you just
click with somebody, and there's a chance your
souls were close to each other. You're also
in a place where you might have not
had that kind of proximity,
but there was distance that was there. You
just didn't get along so well with somebody.
Do you know? So you're going from the
abode of the,
and now what the hadith is saying is
you go from there
and you're
in the womb.
This is a state of existence,
the ra'am.
The hadith uses the word batan,
which means belly
in Arabic. Right? It's the same thing. Right?
The womb is not in your mother's hand.
It's in her stomach. Do you know?
So the soul comes into the button,
the rahem.
The rahem, it has the same root as
rahma,
mercy, compassion.
Right? And this is the idea. Right? If
you've ever just thought about the way a
woman gets pregnant I don't know if anybody
thinks I don't think about. I don't sit
at home and think about how women get
pregnant in that way. Right? But what's happening
when someone gets pregnant? Like, their stomach gets
bigger. Right? So the Rahem is giving this
illustration
that mercy is meant to be expansive, not
restrictive.
As the fetus grows,
so to the womb grows. The Rahim as
an extension of Ar Rahman,
it's giving us this idea
that mercy and compassion
kind of extends with life. It's not meant
to be restrictive.
Do you see what I mean? So you're
in the womb,
right, for however many weeks, months.
9 months is like the general,
some people less, some people more,
But the soul is breathed
in. That's his interjection into the womb.
From this,
you have now,
like, a time in dunya.
Right? Let's say, here is dunya, the cup
of water.
Dunya is going to have phases of existence.
None of us in the room right now
are babies.
Right? Are any of you babies?
No. You're not. Right?
All of you exist right now in the
materialistic
world. Okay? If the water is too transparent
to see, let's say the date
is Dunya.
Okay? Can everybody see what I'm doing here,
or is this camera in the way? Yeah?
Good. The date is dunya.
The starting point is when you're a baby.
The end point is when you're an elder.
While we are here,
there's still souls that are here.
Right?
Because if a baby is born a week
from now, it's got the soul in the
fetus.
If a baby is born a year from
now, that fetus doesn't exist abnormally
longer than the typical fetus,
so that soul is still over here.
Right?
It didn't stop existing. The abode of the
after you were breathed into the fetus,
but those souls are still there. The idea
is to think bigger than yourself
because there are tons of souls that still
haven't come into the womb yet, let alone
here.
Some people, they're gonna get to
infancy,
and that's gonna be the the extent of
their life in this world. Some people are
going to get to
being
children,
adolescents,
teenagers,
young adults,
adulthood,
or being like
really old,
but death
is the mechanism
of transition
from this existence to the next.
So you go from here
by being blown into here,
and then mothers
give birth into here,
and then death
is a means to something. It's not an
ends. And what it's a means to is
going to be what is this next phase
of existence, which is the barzakh,
the intermediary
realm.
This is the grave. May Allah grant us
ease in the grave and grant our loved
ones. We're in the grave ease.
But this is the next phase of existence.
It's a place that is impacted by how
you live in this world.
So for people who did good in this
world,
their time in the grave
is something that's also easy, place of illumination,
whatever else. When the soul is removed from
the body,
that's what's happening. The angel of death is
coming. This is what this hadith talks about
in terms of fate and decree.
So you're not in a state where that
pulling is done with ease.
There's some
challenge there for some. For others, it's a
little bit more facilitated.
But when everybody is buried, the ground essentially
squeezes the person.
Right?
And you're in the grave.
People who are good people, they say
the grave is a, you know, price
where it's restful,
the equivalent of, like, a newlywed couple
sleeping on their 1st night as husband and
wife. The rest in the grave is like
the way that they would rest, you know.
For people who did not live well, it's
a place of agitation,
a place of difficulty. Right? May Allah make
it a place of light for us. But
this is another phase of existence. We could
talk about all these things in detail. We're
not going to because that's not the point
of this halakah. But just for us to
understand conceptually,
this hadith, you can't understand it in a
vacuum fully because it's giving us insight into
certain things. From the Barzakh now, there's resurrection,
and you have now a day of judgment.
This day of judgment,
everybody
is there as well. So why it takes
so long? Right? Because all of us think
about how many people in New York City
there are right now on the street.
This is like a an iota of the
number of people that exist. So why is
the day of judgment so long? Because there's
so many people that everybody is taking into
account
for everything,
like all of the stuff that they have,
all the stuff that they did, all the
stuff that they didn't do, but they could
have done. Like, all of it is in
the prism of judgment.
So this is going to be
where people are resurrected
from their graves, and they are resurrected on
the day of judgment. The day of judgment
is just that. It's a day of judgment.
There's nothing else that it is. You are
judged based off of your actions
in this world.
Right?
And then from there,
you have the rest of the table
until that wall,
as far as you can go, that's eternal
existence.
We are created beings,
but we were made for eternal existence.
So you want to visualize as best as
you can.
Right?
How much is this
in comparison to everything else?
It's nothing
in comparison to everything else.
But the trick that we fall into
is not only
is it
unnecessarily
magnified,
it's seen as the only thing.
This
is just a drop in the bucket in
terms of what eternal existence means.
So don't live just for this,
and understand how it's related
to everything that comes
prior to and after the fact.
If we were to start adopting characteristics
now
relevant to the frames of existence
that our souls go through,
the abode of the Arwa,
this is where you are in the beginning.
It's your creating point.
The Rahim, it's an abode of mercy.
The first place Allah puts you before you
leave from the place of the souls
is a
home of mercy,
the Rahim.
He's looking for reasons for you to succeed.
You're in dunya for a little bit of
time.
Dunya
is the place of decision making and actions.
You cannot
act in the womb.
You cannot take actions in the abode of
the.
You can only act and choose choices
in dunya.
You get into the barzakh,
the intermediary realm,
you can't do anything there. It's a place
of rest, a place of slumber. Look at
how exhausting the world is. Right? May Allah
grant us ease.
As the Quran says. Right?
That after you have exhausted yourself,
like, then you, like, put in the work.
You know what I mean? Right?
You wanna get to a place
where it's a place of actual
restful slumber
based off of what's happening here, but that's
what this is. It's a place of rest.
Like, you can't do anything there.
The place that you can do stuff is
here in the dunya.
You cannot do anything after you leave dunya.
No more choices. No more actions.
The people in Dunya can do for you.
That's why we are described
as one of the things that benefits the
deceased after they leave.
Knowledge that they pass on, an ongoing charity,
and a believing child that prays for them.
Right? So you have impact on what happens
thereafter
for yourself as well as for others.
None of you play for my great grandparents.
That doesn't mean you're bad people, but why
in your consciousness
would you be thinking about my ancestors?
There's only certain people's names that you know
that exist.
If you're not making to offer them, who's
making to offer them?
And if you don't have a reason to
get up to pray for yourself,
you're not getting up to pray for the
people that struggled for you and sacrificed for
you, so you could be sitting with a
multimillion dollar view in the middle of Manhattan.
Like,
that's what it is.
You get to the day of judgment.
The day of judgment
is about accountability.
Also not a place where you can take
actions.
So you can't say to Allah, let me
go back and pray a couple of extra
rakaz that I missed.
Let me go give that charity that I
should've given.
Let me go seek forgiveness from the one
that I wronged. Let me go apologize for
the lies that I told, the gossiping that
I engaged in. Let me go try to
fix the messes that I make or engage
in acts of kindness and beauty. Just give
me a little bit more time. There's people
who are going to come on the day
of judgment. Forget about having books that are
filled with all kinds of challenging things or
whatever else. The angels are gonna come to
them,
and their books are gonna have nothing in
it.
And they're gonna say to them, how long
did you live in this world?
And in that moment, they're gonna be, like,
looking in their books and saying, maybe a
day, maybe half a day,
because they did nothing.
It wasn't even that they did wrong
or right
in a they did nothing with their time.
There's nothing written in the book,
and then you can't do anything when you're
on the day of judgment.
That's just when you're taking into account for
what you did. It's not the place of
doing. The place of doing is here where
we're at right now.
And then after that is eternal existence. May
Allah make us people of Jannah.
The whole idea
when you are here
is to not live
in pursuit
of Jannah
or to live in avoidance of Jahannam.
The whole idea when you're here is to
just live in pursuit of the pleasure of
the divine.
And then Allah in his infinite wisdom is
gonna decide where we end up.
But if you live for Jannah
or you live in avoidance of Jahannam,
that's not the same as living
to build a relationship with the creator of
jannah and jahannam, which can do nothing to
you other than what Allah wills for it
to do.
So I want you to think for a
minute as we're looking at this hadith about
its relevance to us, because we'll talk about
it in terms of the thick of abortion
and, like, medicinal practices and whatever else.
But
for all of us, we gotta understand this
foundational part.
You are not the body
that exists in this worldly existence.
You are the soul that was breathed into
the womb
that came from the abode of the souls,
that is now traversing this worldly plane with
this vessel that is physical,
that is going to return back to the
earth that it came from, and then the
movement forward is going to continue to be
of the souls.
So here is where we want to think
that Allah
took us in our celestial state and breathe
us. We have been breathed
into the womb in a physical state. So
there's a relationship now between what is physical
and metaphysical
at the very onset of our creation,
where we now have movement forward,
what do we do with these
souls that we have?
How much of the day, the week?
All of you are created from a common
beginning.
You go 40 days here to 40 days
here to 40 days here, and then the
soul comes in. That's you.
You're the soul.
You're not the lump of flesh alone
that is cultivated
in the womb.
Then you move forward now in this existence,
having a worldly experience
as a celestial created
entity.
Where does it get lost in the mix?
The focus now that is purely on the
physical
rather than the metaphysical,
and it's not an either or, but it's
a both end.
The Hadith is telling us through the prism
of embryology,
you have parts that are physical
and you have parts that are metaphysical.
What gets in the way
of recognizing the synergy
as well as the individual
understanding
of the presence of the
that is there.
That all of us are made in this
way,
but all of us don't necessarily remember it.
Does this make sense?
So I like you to do,
I'll take a pause, return to the person's
next to you. What are you taking away
from this so far? What is it bringing
up for you in the course of this
conversation,
some of the takeaways,
and then we'll come back and discuss and
kind of move forward. But go ahead.
Have a night shift up to head off
to the hospital. Oh, good
night.
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
discussing?
What's coming up for people?
Yeah. Go ahead, Rilla.
I was thinking, like, how we're just so
focused
in materialistic
things in the world.
I wouldn't
specifically call, like, education and
career
as materialistic, but still it is materialistic
because,
it takes away
the thought of, like, why we're brought into
this world
and, like, the purpose that we are in
this world, which is to serve humanity and
do good to other people. For example, we
were just discussing
how
it was something really horrible and was,
for us to wake up, like, 42 days
ago.
But because we were so focused in our
materialistic
values, being an education player or other things,
that we didn't pay attention
to what's happening in the rest of the
world. And in 75 years of occupation, not
just
42
days because we are so focused in, like,
materialistic
things in the world. Forget about the soul
and the purpose of.
But how do you forget about like, it's
a part of you. Do you get what
I mean? Like, if you don't think about
the little pinky toe on your foot,
it doesn't mean you're not utilizing it or
it's not there. Do you get what I'm
saying?
Like, parts of it like, I was talking
to my kids the other day,
and I was trying to I was trying
to convince my children to let me shave
their eyebrows off of their face. And they
said, well, Baba, no. And I was like,
what do you even use them for? When
do you ever think about them? They're like,
no, Baba. Like, could you shave your eyebrows?
And I'm like, no. Like, I I'm not
going to. I'm gonna shave yours off.
But, like, there's parts of you that just
because you don't think about them,
doesn't mean
that they're not, like, still present
or that you wouldn't
do anything
to, like,
let them go. Right?
Like, what do you use, like, all of
the toes on your feet for?
But if I said I'll give you a
$1,000
to
give me one of your pinky toes,
none of you would do it. You know?
The nails on your feet, what do you
use them for? Do you know what I
mean? Right? Realistically speaking, there's things that you
don't even know why they're there.
But
the idea that I would let go of
any part of my physical self
is like, how is that even possible?
If you're not engaging
your,
it doesn't mean that it's not a part
of you still.
Right?
It's the very thing that's, like, the essential
life component.
The
is not something
that we're given so much detail on. Do
you get what I mean?
But it is the distinguishing
variable
between the body that has life and the
body that has no life.
Because when you move
from dunya
to barzakh,
the material world to the intermediary realm,
Death is the process of what? The soul
being removed from the body.
So
if this thing is so important,
why is it not being paid attention to?
You know what I mean?
And the way that I'm built
is not necessarily
that Yeah. Like, even if I'm not thinking
about the toes on my feet, if I
didn't have any of them, my balance would
get thrown off. The way that I walk
would get screwed up. Do you know what
I mean?
But
can you actually
live in the world
just as a physical
body?
And, yeah, like, you can.
You can live in a world
that even though the ruah is there,
you are not engaging it or taking care
of it
or cultivating it in any capacity.
The nuffs can be what defines decisions. The
heart doesn't have to.
And so you get to a place where
what I eat is just about the physicality.
How I dress is just about the physicality.
How I sleep is just about the physicality.
Whether I pray or not is just about
the physical,
the relationships that I have or I don't
have. All of these things is just about
what is outward, what is outward, what is
outward. This is what we talk about quite
often,
praying with your body versus praying with your
heart,
praying versus praying to God. Right? And what
are you praying to God with? It's not
just the presence of your physical body,
but all of these things aligned in the
ways that they need to be aligned.
You know?
So can you have just a purely
physical
living in this world without engaging
the metaphysical?
Like, yeah, you could live overtly just as
a body
as if you didn't have this soul inside
of you.
You get what I mean? Does this make
sense?
Other thoughts, what else came up for people
as we were talking?
Yeah.
Yeah. So why the hadith on intentions is
the first hadith in the book?
Do you know? You don't, like, memorize hadith
just at random,
but you also see there's a order to
why they're placing these things in the chapters
that they do and why certain chapters precede
other chapters.
You're on a journey, like, as a spirit.
It's going
to eternal existence.
So intentionality
can have
multiplicity
to it, but a part of it has
to also be in a place where, like,
hey. Like, there's a destination ahead that's an
ultimate destination, and all of the stuff is
gonna get left behind. Do you know what
I mean? I'm not taking my jacket with
me to the day of judgment. Do you
know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not.
Do you know?
It's got a utility to it. Functionally, it's
something that's there.
And where and how you're in certain places
that, like, if you fundamentally
just get everything you want
in the world, then what do you need
Jenna for?
But the roadway to get
the back to where it came from.
So where the Quran speaks about the Warithun,
Right? The inheritors.
What are they? They're the inheritors of Jannah.
May Allah make us from amongst them. Like,
the whole idea is you're trying to go
back
home, like, where you came from. Do you
know? Right? So the roadblocks they're gonna come
in the way are gonna be the nature
of this, of what we know of it,
is sometimes about denial
of the things that make it just a
bodily experience.
Because the nuffs is lazy and it's not
generous and it's not charitable and doesn't want
you to apologize.
It doesn't want you to struggle. Do you
know what I mean?
So sometimes you gotta push and not formulate
against things
that
are rooted in what the first part of
the hadith is saying. Right?
That
he is the trustworthy one and the one
that is trusted. He's a representative
of the divine
and that whatever this book says, even if
it's talking about embryology
14 centuries ago, you don't have to understand
it in order for it to be true.
It doesn't need for you to believe it
in order for it to be valid, but
it's in your benefit to actually believe it.
Not what you think is best, what Allah
thinks is best.
And what does your spirit have to say
about it, not just your body?
What does your metaphysical have to say about
it, not just the physical?
Do you make sense? Yeah. Other thoughts, what
else is coming up for people as we
discuss some of this? What did you talk
about?
Yeah.
When you're making a worldly decision for, like,
a short term pleasure, it's good to have
the the context and framework of,
is it worth
the the pain in the afterlife for the
short term pleasure
in the in the world?
Yeah.
Ali right, the cousin of the prophet, alayhis
salam,
he says, right, your souls,
your hearts, your souls, they're worth only the
price of paradise.
So sell them only for that price.
Do you know?
Right? Like,
don't sell the most important treasure
that's within you for some paltry sum of
dunya. You can't even take it with you.
You know what I mean? You can't.
This is what people tried to do
historically.
Not only did people bury all their stuff
with them, they tried to bury their people
with them also,
servants, spouses, etcetera.
What ended up happening? A bunch of white
people looted them and took from their tombs
and put in museums
in their own countries, so the people in
their own countries still don't get to have
their stuff. Right? You go all over Europe.
You go all over United States. There's a
bunch of things that we just took from
other people that didn't belong to us, but
they didn't take it either then. If it's
sitting in the museum,
it didn't get with them to the barzakh.
Right?
Like, what is there with them? Which is
where the Hadith ends. It talks about actions
and deeds.
That's the only thing you're taking with you.
Deeds, actions, what you did, what you prevented
yourself from doing versus what you could have
done, but you still didn't do it.
And if there's not a focal point that
says that this little part of existence that's
dunya
cannot be like the ends, but I see
it as a means to something.
Then the paradigm through which you engage worldly
existence
is going to be quite limited
if it's only seen as what are the
potentials here. Because struggle here
translates into
increase there. And struggle here is temporary,
increase there is forever.
So it's not worth it to me that
you and I were gonna hang out till
3 o'clock in the morning if that means
that I'm gonna sleep through Fudger.
Because missing Fudger
is something that's for my soul, a deterrent
towards
vision
of what is coming forward. Do you get
what I mean?
Well, I like you to do for just
a few minutes is turn to the persons
next to you and don't have, like, a
right or wrong conversation.
Don't speak only if you feel like you're
saying what's most correct, but let yourself just
deepen and explore
into the actual discussion.
How do you take care of your ruler?
Like, you specifically,
how does one take care of it?
And what are things that are, like, damaging
the
or your metaphysical
state. Right?
Your heart, your soul, like the combination of
these things.
What are the things that are good for
it? What are the things that are not
good for it? How does one take care
of it? If my 8 year old was
here today
and was like, hey, man.
Like, I don't know what my dad's talking
about. He's trying to get me to shave
my eyebrows off my face. Right? What kind
of man do I live with in my
house? You know? Can you tell me what
this thing is, this soul, and how do
I take care of it? Right?
And if all you get when you're at
a younger stage of life
is also all you get when you engage
religion,
and it's just the do's and don'ts and
the mechanics,
the postures of prayer,
the recitation of Quran,
the how to's of fasting,
they're still only limited to the externals.
Right? It doesn't mean that there's not a
relationship there. The hadith is teaching us about
the onset
of a synergy between physical and metaphysical.
So you gotta start to delve into
how does this metaphysical
work?
What do I do?
Not
like theoretically,
but what are things one can do
to take care of their inner self? The
question makes sense? So in the course of
my day, my week, my month, like, what
are things that are going to bring
that kind of luminosity
inwardly
It's going to provide care to my inner
self.
We can talk about this for a few
minutes, then we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the ways like,
how do you how does somebody take care
of their inner self?
The physical, the metaphysical
has this connection.
We live in a world that teaches us
to look at ourselves and not for ourselves.
Right?
And quite often, the identity variables that we
have
are attached now to things that are just
outward and external alone.
So how do we start to shift to
seeing the importance of both of these fears
as it permeates every part of our religious
tradition?
Do you know? Like bringing presence to
our inner components of prayer, of charity, of
fasting, of pilgrimage,
you know, being able to connect at the
level of spirits and souls. Right?
So we're not just
sharing sociological
characteristics,
common culture, common race, common ethnicity,
but we're connected at the level of hearts,
like inwardly.
So what what can one do to take
care of their inner self?
What do we talk about? Yeah.
So we mentioned,
I mentioned that I I
follow yesterday
that spoke about, how Musa
meet
And
the
portion the person who spoke said that,
being in the state of fasting
helped him elevate from the
literally, like, the weight of food.
Not having that helped him
elevate himself
to, like, have been to speak with Allah.
So I guess fasting is a way to,
like,
purify your soul,
but also engaging in Quran in the sun
as that
used to engage to. And one of them
is people going to sleep, which is you
mentioned,
and it's one of the that can prevent
you from being tortured there.
So that and praying more and,
like, engaging with your religion, not just
in the forest, but also in the sunnaps.
Yeah. Amazing. Like, think about,
for many of us,
what life is like in Ramadan
versus outside of Ramadan.
But conceptually, what's going on there?
You know, what's being lifted in terms of
veils of perception
through not just, like,
the emptying of the stomach, but the filling
of a heart.
Right? So you're nourishing other parts of yourself
and cultivating a relationship with those things.
These exercises, again,
don't need our presence to help, you know.
So somebody can become physically strong
by working
as, like, a woodsman their whole life. They're
not purposely going to a gym for an
hour, but they're chopping wood, and they're carrying
wood,
and they're selling wood, and moving wood. It's
gonna make them hard in their, like, muscles
and whatever else. Do you know? Like, it
brings that fortitude and toughness. Do you get
what I mean? Right? So if you said
to someone, like, hey, do you exercise? They'll
be like, no, I don't exercise. Right? But
they're not saying, I chop wood for 8
hours a day. You know what I mean?
It's the same way. You can experience,
like, the practice in Ramadan.
It doesn't mean you have to be consciously
aware of what it's doing or understand in
order to gain from it. Do you know?
As well as these other practices that are
there. Right? If you bring presence to it,
it then now affords the question,
why would you stop
after it's done?
Like, why did you stop reading Quran when
Ramadan was done? Why did you stop fasting
when Ramadan was done? Why did you stop
giving in charity? Why did you stop coming
to pray together in congregation?
Do you know what I mean? It's not
to knock anybody, but to ask those questions.
What's the trade off, especially in relation to
what we're talking about here? What else? Like,
what else are things we discussed? Yeah.
Conscientious about what you consume and not just
food dietary neutral. So what you listen to
and what you view.
So, like, an example for me, I was
really bad with reality TV, and then I've
given that up with from Lula. But it's
important to replace that with something
good for your soul too. So, like, listening
to, I believe, this podcast could
Amazing. Yeah. Consumption. Go ahead.
Great. Reflection
is really important. Right? Imam Al Haddad,
says
that reflection is the lamp of the heart.
When it departs from it, there's no light
in it. Do you know? What else? Yeah.
I think being at peace and being satisfied
and grateful for what you have,
especially in the age of social media where
there's a lot being thrown at us in
terms of, like, the 8
ones. So just being grateful for, like, the
bare minimum,
which I think,
we are in, like, the recent times
because we have seen other people suffer through
it, like clean water,
shelter, and food, which other people don't have.
So just being grateful for, like,
the basic
necessities of life and having the walk of
Yeah. 100%.
Right?
And in the reflection periods, you asked the
question of how much is enough?
Like, how much do I need? Do you
know?
And it it all becomes attached to each
other.
Can we understand the connection between
the physical and the metaphysical?
You know? You don't exist in 2 places
simultaneously.
And when you go home at night, you
don't, like, unzip your body off of your
soul and then hang it up in the
closet,
but there's a connection point in terms of
worldly existence
between these two things. They
coexist simultaneously.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
So why don't we do it?
Like, what gets in the way?
What's, like, the barrier of kinda
engagement
of both facets?
Because it's not either or. Right? We're not
a people who are just meant
to read Quran all day to the detriment
of worldly responsibilities
and physical
nature. Right? Like, there's hadith where the prophet
essentially speaks about,
dislike for the portly scholar,
you know. Like, how can you be
an alum
of Islam,
like a a scholar of Islam
and, you know, be portly. It's not like
your physical body
is what's being questioned here, but somebody who
is purposefully,
like, eating to a point of satiation,
not taking care of their physical wellness,
and they claim knowledge of the religion.
Do you see what I mean? Like, the
body is the vessel of the soul,
so it has to be something
that you are honoring
as well through your recognition of how you
kinda traverse this worldly plane. Do you know?
Yeah.
Yeah. And there's multiple answers. Right? And they're
gonna be individualized.
Do you know? Been thinking about this again
in this way,
what kind of experience am I having right
now
in this world?
And am I having just simply like a
bodily experience, a physical experience?
Am I also having a metaphysical
experience?
Do you know what I mean? And what
are the things that engage the different parts
of what make me
what I am?
And how are the two things connected to
each other? So the Hadith is giving us
indication
to the remarkable nature of scientific
kinda insight from the Quran and the Hadith,
at times when people did not think about
these things. But its individual relevancy back to
me
is that, hey,
like,
all of us as humans, were made in
this way in our worldly existence.
There's the physical body
and then there's the soul breathed in at
a 120 days
of the fetus
existence.
So why is this hadith mentioning this thing?
And it's not just in terms of
when does, like, life begin and theological debates,
and what does abortion mean, and when is
it allowed, and when is it not.
But it's also telling me what are the
foundational
building blocks of me as a person.
Does anywhere in the Quran or the Hadid
say when you hit a certain age, your
soul departs, but your body still moves?
No. Right?
Like, you are in this place where these
things
necessitate
coexistence
in order for the body to actually have
life to it.
And if at any point in time, the
soul is removed from the body,
the body is just a shell.
So it's not the
primary
and this is where the shift comes in
that the focus only becomes on the primary
being the body,
but it's not.
It's a part of it, but it's not
the whole thing.
And if anything,
what's moving forward
is going to be the not
the not the.
So why am I spending so much time
fussing over just what is external alone,
let alone even thinking about how it relates,
and all these other things that are heightened
in terms of just inward
self development,
you know, and thinking about what else exists
within me. It's not just
the and the and the,
but inside of you are all of your
memories,
all of the experiences you've had, all of
the feelings that you have. Right? Do you
feel better when you're sad alone or when
you're sad with somebody else
who's there to support you when you're sad?
Do you feel a little bit better when
you let out certain things rather than holding
them all inside of you? You start to
learn about the nature of the self through
the self, and you start to think too
also what does it mean to be a
supporter of somebody else. Right? Anybody can pontificate
to people. Do you know? But the prophet
didn't talk so much.
So what was he bringing out with people?
He was helping them to recognize
what they had as inward beauty.
Even the man who's narrating the Hadith,
Abdul ibn Mas'ud,
the young black man who's poor, who is
physically skinny and small in stature,
People would laugh at him. Right? We said
this hadith last time that he was climbing,
getting something from a tree, and the wind
blew, and it lifted up his garments so
you could see his legs, and people were
laughing at his legs, at how skinny they
were. And the prophet
asked them, like, what are you laughing at?
And they say we're laughing at his legs.
Right? Because they're so skinny. And the prophet
says that
his legs are going to weigh heavier on
the scales on the day of judgement
than than the mountains of Uhud.
You know.
Like,
there's
a recognition
that what ennobles him is not what
worldly societally
perspective
is ennobling.
So who cares if Meccan society
is treating
poor people a certain way, black people a
certain way, etcetera.
Not a way that we're indifferent towards it,
but this man's elevation
is coming
from the fact that
he is just inwardly strong,
and all of those things are what make
him good and beautiful.
Not because society
is the judge of what's good and beautiful,
but Allah in his wisdom is what the
hadith is.
Allah in his wisdom
is decreeing certain things for us. Do you
see what I mean?
So the way that you were built is
that you have the
physical
and then you have the metaphysical,
and those two things have to be understood.
The dunya
is going to make you think only about
the physical,
even in relation to your feelings
that are inward
and expressed outward,
is going to teach you to only engage
what you feel
through
external mechanisms.
Numb the pain.
Desensitize
the pain.
Be in a place where outward
mechanisms
help you deal with inward agitation.
Smoke this, drink this, watch this, consume this,
listen to this,
wear this,
dress like this,
eat this,
drink this.
This is temporary. It's band aids.
Right? Because to apply something physical
to something metaphysical
that's hurting,
it's not gonna can you put a Band
Aid on your soul?
Do you know what I mean?
Right?
Can I put a band aid on my
spiritual heart?
No. You gotta look for things that are
also
metaphysical
in their nature
that allow for there to be a sense
of holistically
who it is that we are.
So you can read this hadith and be
in awe that the prophet, expounding upon Quranic
verse, is talking to us about the stages
of embryology
and the growth of the fetus. It's remarkable.
Do you know what I mean? That's not
something we should undermine,
but we don't want that to be the
only takeaway.
And at this juncture in our collective
lives individually,
you gotta be in a place where you
have recognition
of the phases of existence
in a way that's not just remotely memorized,
but it informs decisions.
It plays a role in determining choices
because where this hadith is gonna end, that
we'll talk about next time, is gonna be
about actions
and deeds.
Right?
You live a life that's the life of
the people of paradise, and at the end
of it, it's turned away. Right?
Same thing. The opposite is true because it's
all about actions and deeds.
How many actions do you undertake
for the sake of what is outward and
what is physical
versus how many are you undertaking for the
sake of what is inward and what is
metaphysical.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
And then the trick is when you can
get the inside right, the outside looks so
different.
So you don't wanna just find beauty in
everyone around you,
but you learn to find beauty in yourself.
It's not just about having love for others,
but you also understand the biggest block to
loving others is that you don't love yourself
fully.
And what you need to be able to
be able to love yourself fully is a
removal of the things that are layered now
on the inner self, not on the outer
self. Outwardly, we all look the way we
look. That's why some of these things are
invisible,
but they're still present. Like, people don't pay
attention to you when you're sad. They're not
stopping on the street saying, like, are you
okay? When you're feeling miserable.
Entire experiences are erased. You know?
Because they're only looking at you from physical
eyes, not metaphysical eyes.
There's so many hadith where the companions
are looking agitated
and the prophet, even before they ask something,
he's like, what's on your minds?
Because he knows what his people are going
through. He's connected at a different level. Do
you know what I mean? So it's not
just like anxiety
that's telling me I need to talk to
you right now, like, tell me what's bothering
you, but love,
and it just comes across different.
Do you know? Because you can't give somebody
something you don't possess in the 1st place,
and you can only give to them what
you do have in the 1st place. So
what, like, if we open up your heart
right now, your spiritual heart, what would we
find inside of it?
In terms of virtue, in terms of vices,
in terms of things that are values and
things of beauty and things that are like
diseases of the heart. Right? It's not like
a,
a thing that we have like, everybody makes
mistakes, and there's stuff that's inside of us
that we didn't put inside of us, but
it's still there.
So at some juncture, I'd like just figure
out what are the building blocks of me
and think out, okay, like, well, maybe some
of this sits there cause I'm not actually
looking at this
through the prism of
this part of me is actually an important
part of me that existed well before the
physical part of me existed and is going
to continue to exist after this entire world
and everything in it is gone.
Right? That soul, like, still exists. You're created
as a being, but you're created for eternal
existence.
Does does that make sense?
Do you get what I mean? Right? And
what does it look like there? Like, I
don't know, you know, like, we're in our
prime state of existence when we're in Jannah,
may Allah make us people of Jannah. I
told this to people last year, but there's
a brother who's a convert in our community.
They say you're, like, 33, 35 years old
in Jannah. Right? Lunar years, you know.
And he had just turned that age,
and he was like, man, I gotta lose
a lot of weight. I was like, why
he gotta lose a lot of weight? He's
like, because I don't wanna be fat in
Jenna. And I said, what are you talking
about? He's like, well, aren't you gonna be
who you are when you're 33 in Jenna?
I was like, no. That's not what it
means. Like, it's not like the state that
you're in. It's just talking about primacy, like,
when you're, like, kind of at your best.
And he was like, great. Because I'm like
fat right now, and I don't wanna be
fat forever. I was like, good, man. Allah
will make us all pew I would rather
be a fat man in heaven
than, like, a well put together man in
*. Do you know? And that's what you
gotta really think about. Right? Like like, fundamentally,
this is what you have to think about.
Do you know?
How much of dunya is going to be
enough to give up, like, bliss and akhira?
So why why are you giving in
to emotional
angst
that validates you talking to people poorly
that makes it seem like it's okay to
gossip about someone.
These are stupid reasons
to bring,
like, detriment to you in the world beyond
this one. Do you know what I mean?
It's, like,
dumb. Do you know? Not that, like, any
Haram makes sense to do
in that sense.
And a lot of people turn to Haram
in the absence of community support
and people, like, giving to them. Which other
things you wanna think about, we all have
a common beginning.
If you don't value your spirit,
you're definitely not gonna value somebody else's spirit,
and then you can only connect
at the level of a shared external.
It's not a sign of strength necessarily
that the only people you're ever comfortable around
are the people that are from the same
village of the same country that your family
came from, and you get thrown into a
conundrum
the minute you're around people that are different
from you,
or that you have to debase people
that come from different walks of life,
claim that they're lacking in comparison to you
is telling you something about the state of
your inside.
It's not strong, it's weak, insecure,
fragile at that point in time. Do you
know?
Okay. So let's do this.
We'll take a pause here.
People wanna take a quick few minutes and
just turn to the people next to you,
what are you taking away from the overall
conversation?
Just for 2, 3 minutes, and we'll come
back and discuss.
My mom is calling me, so that's why
we're gonna pause right now. Then we'll come
back and discuss.
Islamic Center.
Medium,
small, medium.
Medium.
It. But at the back of a kernel.
K.
Happen
Okay.
So just as we're wrapping up, what are
some of the takeaways from the conversation overall?
Anything coming up for people who are standing
out?
Yeah. I think,
the end of the last portion of the
hadith, I think I think I see that,
of course, prayer is our guard.
You know?
Prayer is our guard from,
reaching
Jahannam or *
Fire with as well where
it is our obligation to continue to
learn more
of the deed, making that connection,
especially with, you know, for me,
about
as well, you know, the soul and making
that connection between physical self and,
metaphysical
self and and the. You know? Just to
acknowledge that and help
individually
acknowledge that and help brothers and sisters even
at younger age as you mentioned is your
son,
For them to acknowledge that and give them
that spiritual growth is very important.
Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Other thoughts? Other things we're
taking away?
Because that's what we're sanctifying. Right? When we're
sanctifying human life.
When people put conditions on, we will only
sanctify
people of this skin color, people of this
complexion,
people of this country,
people of this background.
They're failing to recognize
we all have, like, this shared humanity
that's rooted in
this experience of
having these spirits.
Do you know?
And there's a dignity that's shared within this
experientially.
But if you don't ever think about those
parts of yourself,
you're not then thinking about these parts within
other people or honoring them through those ways
or recognizing it through that. Do you see?
Okay. So let's do this. We'll take a
pause here. Just a quick reminder,
doctor Ali Mermur will have his helika tomorrow,
Tuesday.
The building closes tomorrow at 8 PM,
and then it's gonna be closed Wednesday Thursday.
We're gonna be open for Jummah on Friday.
The building will be open from 12 to
4.
We'll have lunch after. We'll pray,
probably around, like, 3, 3:30,
and then ask people to kinda head out
of the space.
It'll close before mug group time. So just
keep that in mind.
If anyone's around on Friday,
it's just gonna be Khalid and I,
like, hear from our staff. So we can
come, help set up, help clean up, we'd
appreciate it. And also just be in the
space. Typically on holidays,
we get as many people as we do
during the rest of the,
you know, year,
because different people show up also.
You know, people are off from school, so
bring their children. Families will come.
People who are visiting the city, they've heard
about the IC.
Like, they'll come for Joma.
So it'd be amazing that when they come,
they have a great experience if it's, like,
one of their only times coming.
So as many of us can be around
to help and welcome people in, that would
be great.
And then after that, the building will be
closed through the weekend and resume on Monday.
As normal hours of operation.
We have registration open for our Umrah trip.
I know some of you are gonna be
joining us.
The rest of you are interested
or you know people who'll be interested. We're
gonna go from January 3rd to 12th.
We do 4 days in Medina and then
4 days in Mecca.
Just definitely try to come.
This year, we're trying to keep it a
little smaller than previous years. Last year, we
took 200 people, which is really nice, but
everyone didn't get to meet everyone else.
So I think we're limiting it
to 80 people
or so for this year,
just so we can kinda create more of
that cohesion in the group, which means also
we're not, like,
unlimited in seats.
So if you can apply sooner than later
or tell,
people that you know who might be interested
to apply,
just so we can kinda get it squared
away. We do a lot of prep sessions
in advance. There's a lot of guided tours
that we do.
We do halakas after Fajr, after Isha.
It's a little different from, like, what other
experiences
are like.
So recommend coming if you can or letting
people know to join as well.
And then next week, we'll have all of
our normal programs that we normally do,
plus some
one off programs that we're doing. We're gonna
be starting
again with our professional groups meeting.
So we have a meetup planned
in the 1st week of December.
I think we have something planned
for the IC Professionals group.
We're gonna have a black Muslim meetup in
addition
to our monthly Latino Muslim meetup.
We're gonna do a dinner for a convert
community.
So it'll be different things happening
that you could definitely avail yourselves of,
and we'll be advertising all of that, in
the coming week as well.
Okay.
So we prayed Isha before we started,
just so people know. If you could help,
just put the chairs back,
and we'll see everyone
next Monday.